Family Trees
by TdeAlba
Summary: Natalie attempts to help Matthew with a school projectdrawing a family tree. Considering the nature of the Buchanan family this isn't going to be easy. Little bit of John thrown in


Disclaimer: I own nothing. No seriously, I'm a poor college student. Nothing.

Author's note: So… I'm not complaining, but if there's anything that this fandom could use more of it's the funny. Now I don't mean to disparage the hilarious moments that you find here and there in our typically angst or smut filled pieces, but sometimes (a lot of times for me lately) you just want a nice, quick, light-hearted laugh. And lacking one by anyone else, I had to write it myself.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, if you're at all familiar with my other work: that funny isn't exactly what you associate with me… Yeah, me neither. And it's really not my strong suit. And honestly, this isn't that funny. I think it devolves into "cute" at best… but I tried.

The inspiration for this was a conversation I had a while back indoctrinating a newbie. A lot of you have probably had them. I was on the other end of one when I came back to the show last year "Who's that?" "Viki's other daughter" "Viki's other daughter" "Viki's other daughter's dead" "No her _other _daughter. Jessica's twin." "Jessica doesn't have a twin" "She does now. She married Cristian right before he died" "Cristian's dead?" "No body." "Oh, so not dead"… you get the picture

Timeline is either before or (dare we hope) sometime after current events.

Okay, the note is as long as the fic… I should sleep…

* * *

Natalie walked into Bo's office to put some papers on his desk and almost tripped over Matthew who was lying on the floor on his stomach with a large piece of poster board. "Hey!" she said in surprise, "what are you up to?" 

"School project," he mumbled.

She walked closer so she could look over his shoulder. So far the poster board consisted only of a series of line segments drawn at right angles. "Can I ask what it is?"

"It's a family tree," he explained, "we have to- Hey! Maybe you can help."

"I don't know Matthew," she said depositing the papers on his father's desk, "I have to-"

"It won't take long," he said sitting up so he could look at her more easily, "I already called Rachel and got Mom's side all taken care of, so it's just the Buchanan side I need help with."

Natalie sat down on the corner of Bo's desk, "The thing is Matthew, I haven't been a Buchanan much longer than you have, remember? I'm sure you can find someone who will be more help to you than me."

"Who?" Matthew asked, "Dad's in a meeting and I already called Grandpa and he just went into this whole speech about the Buchanan men-" Natalie couldn't help but laugh at Matthews impression of Asa. "And Kevin and Duke are too busy and they always treat me like I'm a little kid anyway."

"Okay," Natalie conceded, "I'll do what I can, but I don't know how much help I'm going to be."

"Thanks." Matthew picked up a notebook in which he appeared to be sketching out a rough version of his tree. "Okay, so your dad is my dad's brother?"

"Yes," she said.

"And Jessica's your twin-"

Natalie nodded not seeing any reason to introduce Matthew to the concept of Mitch Lawrence and the fact that she and Jessica were only half sisters.

"And Kevin and Joey are your brothers but they don't have the same dad as you?"

"Right," she said, "but Clint, my dad, he adopted them so-"

"So how do I put that on the tree?" Matthew asked his pencil poised in hand.

Natalie thought, "I don't know. It's up to you. I mean Kevin and Joe both call Clint 'Dad.'"

He considered this for a moment and said, "I'll put them on here and I'll just make a note."

"I think that makes sense," she said.

"Okay, here's one I really don't get," he said after adding Kevin and Joey to his sketch, "Who's Rex? I mean he calls himself your brother, but he's not actually related to anyone, is he?"

She chuckled, "Yeah, that is kind of confusing. He's um… Well okay, you know how you thought for a long time that Sam Rappaport was your father but it turned out to be Uncle Bo?"

"Yeah," Matthew said furrowing his brow as though he really wanted to understand this.

"Well the same thing kind of happened with me so I thought for a long time that Roxy was my mother which meant that Rex was my brother. And now we know that's not true, but I still think of Rex as my brother."

He nodded thoughtfully. "I understand that. I still think of Jen as my sister."

"Yeah," Natalie said. Funny, she always thought about how difficult Jen's death had been for Rex; she tended to forget that Matthew had lost a sister when she died.

"Natalie?" Matthew asked looking down at his notebook.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think it would be okay if I still put Jen on the family tree? Even though we're not really related anymore?"

She smiled down at him tenderly, "I think that would be fine, Matthew."

Matthew scribbled in his notebook some more before he said without looking up. "Now I know Renee is married to my grandpa, but I also know she's not my grandmother."

"That's right," she said.

"So who _is_ my grandmother?"

Natalie stared at him for a moment, racking her brain then straightened up and said, "You know, I think I hear my phone, hold on." She hurried to her computer and without bothering to sit down quickly ran a Google search. Everything was on the internet these days. There had to be some sort of genealogy website on the Buchanans, right? The search came back with several hundred results. This was either going to be a simple "point and click once" operation or it was going to mean slugging through a bunch of irrelevant garbage. Clicking on the first website and waiting for it to load she glanced anxiously back towards Bo's door. If Matthew wandered out there she'd be caught.

"Natalie?" a voice asked behind her, "something wrong?"

She turned to look into John's eyes, full of genuine concern. Something wrong? Well, yes, but not quite something she could own up to. "No," she said quickly.

He didn't say anything but gave her a look which made it clear he didn't believe her.

"I'm just helping Matthew with a school project," she added, hoping he would let the subject drop.

"That's nice of you," he said.

"Oh well, you know, I don't mind," she said looking back at her computer screen. She didn't know any of the names on that page; it must be another Buchanan family. Or a branch of cousins she'd never met. There were probably lots of those.

She clicked on the next page. It seemed to consist mostly of pictures of her male relatives with their shirts off. Not taking the time to wonder what sort nut would put together a site like that she moved onto the next one.

"You um… seem a little worked up over a kid's school project, you sure that's all?" John asked.

Damn. He wasn't going away. Problem with dating a cop; they had too much practice being suspicious. "Well I just… kid's been through a lot lately, I just want to help," she said.

"What kind of project is it?" he asked leaning forward in an attempt to look at her screen. She quickly minimized her browser window.

"It's um… it's a family tree thing, you know? Like you have to do in school when you're little."

He nodded, "Yeah, I think I had to do one once. Didn't require internet research back then. You know, not that there _was_ internet back then. I just asked Mom."

"I always just made up stuff," she said with a shrug. She should have just done that this time, would make things much easier.

"So what am I missing?" John asked.

"Missing?"

"Well you're stressed out about something and you're hiding whatever it is from me, so if it's not about Matthew's project-"

"Trust me, it's about Matthew's project," she said bringing the browser back up.

"I don't understand-"

She sighed and turned back to face him. "Okay, promise you won't laugh?"

Holding up his right hand as though he were taking a pledge, he said, "Promise."

"I don't know my grandmother's name," she said.

"Which one?" he asked.

She thought for a moment. "Well either, actually. No, no, wait. Mom's mother's name was Eugenia—that's right because it's Jessica's middle name."

"Well see," he said, "And I mean Asa, he's been married like a dozen times, right?"

"Thirteen," she corrected, "No, fourteen! I think. Maybe. To be fair I think Renee accounts for at least three of those, though."

"Still," John said, "I mean I think it's understandable you'd have a hard time keeping up with them."

"Yeah, okay," she said scrolling down a website that actually looked promising, "but only one of them is my grandmother, you'd think I could remember that at least."

"Well it's kind of a complicated situation," he said trying to reassure her.

"Everything with my family is," she said shaking her head. "Why couldn't Matthew be on Mom's side of the family? I'm better with Mom's side. I think I can name all of her husbands at least—Riley, Burke, Riley, Buchanan, Buchanan, Carpenter, Davidson… wait, did I leave out a Buchanan?"

He smiled, "I don't think it matters that much."

"John, these are things I should know!"

He circled around the desk and put his hands on her shoulders, "Look, Natalie, you love your family. Everyone knows that. Don't beat yourself up for not knowing the names of a couple of people you never met."

"Olympia!" she said, not acknowledging his argument, "that's her name." She glared at her computer screen and added, "Well this site has all the information I need, but it's all split up on different pages. It's going to take forever to print it all out.

Matthew appeared in the doorway and asked, "Natalie, which one of your brothers was Kelly married to?"

"Both," she said quickly.

"What?" Matthew asked in confusion.

John said softly in her ear, "Why don't you go back in there, I'll print this out and bring it in to you."

She shook her head, "You don't have time to bother with this."

"It's a slow day."

"Yeah, but I'm sure you have better things to do."

He kissed her lightly on the mouth. "You _are_ my better thing to do."

She mouthed a quick "thank you" before kissing him back and following Matthew back into Bo's office.

When John joined them a few minutes later Matthew was asking, "But wait… how can Flash be my cousin? I thought she dated Joey?"

"They were just pretending," Natalie explained, "it's a long story."

John handed Natalie the print outs from the genealogy website and said, "These are those papers that need to be filed."

"Thank you," she said again as he walked back out.

* * *

She found him in his office an hour later. 

"Matthew get his project all done?" he asked.

She nodded. "Thanks for all your help. You know, with the printing and with calming me down."

"Glad I could help," he smiled. "You feeling better about it all?"

"I guess," she said thoughtfully. "I mean it does raise some interesting points. Like where _do_ you put your half-twin's alternate personality's baby on your family tree?"

"I wouldn't know," he said moving back from the desk and pulling her into his lap.

"And, you know, it turns out I'm more of a Buchanan than Jess after all."

"How so?" he asked.

She turned enough to look at him and smirked, "I've been married twice as many times as she has."

"Ah," he said.

"This is what you're getting yourself into," she said leaning back against him, "my family's screwed up."

"It's not that bad," he assured her.

"Not that bad? Do you know how many of Asa's wives have also been involved with my Uncle Bo?"

"More than one?" he asked making a face.

"Oh yeah," she said. "And we're barely scratching the surface here."

"Well fortunately, I'm not involved with your family," he said tightening his arms around her, "You're the only one that matters to me."

"Well it's only a matter of time before my illegitimate children start coming out of the woodwork. It's a family tradition."

"Well when they do I promise I won't be scared away," he said nuzzling her neck, "I don't promise not to take out their fathers…"

She laughed. "I'm really lucky. I have to remind myself of that."

"How's that?" he asked.

"Well they might be screwed up, but I have a family. A huge twisted one. And I love them most of the time, and at least some of them love me. And I have you."

"That's lucky?" he asked skeptically.

"Luckier than I ever thought I'd be."


End file.
